


Beta

by Morgane (smilla840)



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Allegory what allegory, Alpha/Beta, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Backstory, Fix-It, Getting Together, Kink Big Bang 2012, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Warnings inside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 19:08:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilla840/pseuds/Morgane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint’s spent years training himself out of the century-old instinct all betas have to obey alphas, and hiding how good a shot he is – after all, no one expects a beta to excel at anything. All that changes when he attracts the attention of Nick Fury, who recruits him into SHIELD. Then he meets Phil Coulson, and everything gets even more out of control.</p><p>(or: the omega fic where no one is an omega)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beta

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings** : alpha/beta/omega ‘verse, heats, knotting, painful sex due to anatomical incompatibilities, bondage for medical reasons, homophobia and involuntary outing (or their equivalent in the A/B/O ‘verse), bullying and sexual harassment. Are also briefly mentioned and/or alluded to: child abuse, domestic abuse, non-con and m-preg. (I went large, but let me know if I've missed something.)
> 
> A word on consent (spoilery, but do read if you feel you might need to): while neither Phil nor Clint are omegas in this fic, alphas also go through heats, but they are described as being capable of making informed decisions and being in control of themselves when they do. However there is a potentially triggery scene as Clint engages in a sex act he’s half-convinced he won’t like (and doesn’t at some point). While it’s his decision, the set-up itself might make people uncomfortable. In addition, Clint has a brief internal freak-out in the middle of sex and Phil doesn’t realise what’s going on, so that moment could possibly be construed as temporary dub-con (?).
> 
> Written for the Kink Big Bang 2012, with some awesome art by Laynie - you can see it [here](http://kink-bigbang.livejournal.com/90380.html#cutid1)!

Clint learned at a very young age three important rules: to always be aware of his surroundings, to always anticipate other people’s mood, and – most importantly – to never _ever_ get noticed. His father was a harsh teacher, and Clint learned quickly. The risk of ending up at the wrong end of his fist otherwise was too high when he was drunk – and even higher when he was in heat. Clint was too young to know what was happening then, and if Barney knew he never said. Yet those few times he did remember – his father dragging his mom into their bedroom for three days and refusing to let her out no matter how much Clint begged from the other side of that door – were seared into his brain forever.

His mom’s quiet and resigned compliance was almost as incomprehensible. She was a beta, sweet and very sad, and Clint loved her fiercely. She always tried to smile and put up a good front for him and Barney, almost succeeding when her husband was out of the house. Clint remembered wishing he would go away forever and never come back – he got his wish in the end, but his father took his mother with him.

Those hard-learned lessons served him well in foster care, Clint keeping a compulsive eye on the bullies so he would know when to duck. People found him unnerving, that tiny little boy always watching their every move, but Clint didn’t care. He wasn’t like Barney, who tried to charm everyone he met – he was bad at it too, but Clint didn’t laugh because that made Barney mad. Barney was scary when he was mad, too much like their father, and that only got worse when he hit puberty and turned out to be an alpha just like him.

That was when everything started to change. Barney was nothing if not predictable – at least to Clint. When his new hormones told him their current home was too small for him, big bad alpha that he was, he didn’t try to use his head to think it through, didn’t consider how it would affect Clint. He just up and left, and Clint followed. What else could he do?

He never quite figured out how the circus made any kind of sense in Barney’s mind. It was a nightmare for Clint at first, too many people he didn’t know and whose reactions he couldn’t predict, their surroundings always changing as they moved from town to town. So he watched everything and everyone obsessively for weeks before he finally got some sense of the place, and then he just kept watching. It had become his way of exerting control over his environment by then – over himself too –, and he needed it to cope with a world that didn’t make much sense.

He was so relieved when he realised he was a beta. Most kids wanted to be alphas, and some wanted to be omegas, but not Clint – he found the thought of going into heat and becoming a slave to his body’s urges frankly terrifying. Of course he knew by then it wasn’t how it truly went: alphas and omegas were perfectly lucid during their heats, and more than able to make rational decisions – anyone saying they just couldn’t help themselves was a fucking rapist. Still, that biological imperative to mate and procreate was something Clint was grateful he didn’t have.

Besides, he had to deal with changes of his own: being a beta was associated with a thankfully limited range of deeply ingrained instincts dating back hundreds of years. In the days when the spike in fertility – and sex drive – associated with alphas’ and omegas’ heats had been necessary for the continuation of the human race, betas had been tasked with making sure things ran smoothly – which had meant obeying their ‘betters’ and protecting potential child bearers. These instincts had thankfully faded over time, just as heats had become less frequent, but they still reared their ugly heads every time Clint interacted with someone who wasn’t a beta. And while it helped him understand his mom better, made him feel closer to her in some way, it also went against everything he held dear. Feeling like he wasn’t fully in control of himself was intolerable – never mind the fact that he didn’t _have to_ obey, just _wanting to_ was unacceptable. 

Clint knew the reputation betas had – pushovers with little willpower, quick to obey and easy to sway. While it was about as true as saying omegas were always desperate for sex, like many stereotypes it stemmed from some truth, and it wasn’t something Clint wanted for himself. So he fought it every time he felt the urge, all the while keeping up the pretence. 

It wouldn’t do to get noticed, after all.

His brother teased him mercilessly about not being an alpha, but Clint ignored him. Despite everything, Barney had idolised their father, while Clint had always been closer to their mom. He didn’t expect him to understand why he wouldn’t trade places with him for the world.

When Barney started learning how to throw knives and use a bow, Clint would go and watch. No one had ever bothered trying to teach _him_ anything – after all, betas weren’t expected to be good enough at anything to be worth the trouble, and there was nothing wrong with being average. 

Whether it actually was the case or they were simply never given an opportunity to show otherwise in a society so dominated by alphas was anyone’s guess.

After each of Barney’s lessons, Clint would wait ‘til everyone was gone and creep down from his perch to try and recreate the day’s lesson. It was hard at first, trying to learn purely from his brother’s mistakes with no one to correct his own. He almost gave up more than once, but the thing that stopped him every time was that despite his disadvantages he was _better_ than Barney. So he kept at it, and it eventually became easier. He was good with knives, but he was great with a bow, even if he was pretty sure his form was terrible and would make an archer weep. He hit his target every time though, and that was good enough for him.

More than anything, it felt _good_. Having a bow in his hands, loosing arrow after arrow into the target, it was the only time Clint felt in complete control of himself. His body and mind were one, reacting precisely to each of his commands, while the rest of the world just dropped away. It was a high, and he was addicted.

He didn’t tell anyone about that either.

\---

Clint found out what Barney was doing with his newly acquired skills by accident. He had been pretending to be asleep, waiting for Barney to pass out so he could borrow his bow and practice a little, when instead of starting to snore, Barney slipped out of bed and out of their trailer. Clint wouldn’t have thought much of it – Barney was sweet on a pretty omega in town who wouldn’t give him the time of day, and he was probably just heading out to implement another of his ill-thought-out seduction plans –, except Barney took his bow with him. Unless he was planning on wooing her with his marksmanship, something weird was going on. 

So Clint followed, hanging back when Barney joined Trick and the two of them set out. He had to keep his distance – it was the middle of the night and there weren’t many people around to hide his presence –, and he eventually lost them. He hurried up to where he had last seen them, but they were nowhere to be found. Clint lurked around for a while, waiting to see if they’d reappear, but they didn’t. He had been about to give up and go back to camp when screams erupted a couple of blocks away before stopping abruptly, and Clint debated with himself for less than a heartbeat before making his way towards the noise – cautiously. Maybe Barney was there.

He hadn’t expected to find a guy lying on the ground in a puddle of blood, a couple of arrows sticking out of him. And all he could do was stare, dumbfounded, until someone grabbed him and started dragging him away. Clint struggled, twisting and kicking as he tried to get free, but whoever was behind him was bigger and stronger.

“Quit it,” Barney hissed in his ear before letting him go, and Clint almost went limp with relief. 

“What’s going on?” he asked with a hint of hysteria as he scrambled after his brother.

“Shut up,” he was told, and the angry glint in Barney’s eyes made Clint close his mouth wisely.

They weaved their way through back alleys in silence until Clint was thoroughly lost and they found Trick again. Clint stopped walking abruptly at the sight of him – Trick was dangerous, he would be angry –, but Barney’s hand on his back propelled him forward despite his reluctance.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Trick growled, and Clint tried to shrink behind his brother – not that he thought he would be much help, but he found himself clinging to the illusion of safety nonetheless.

Barney ran a jittery hand through his hair. “I don’t know, man, he must have followed us.”

“Is it done?” Barney nodded, and Trick went on: “Did he see?”

“I didn’t see anything,” Clint blurted out, but Trick ignored him, reading the truth in Barney’s shrug and lack of denial.

“Get rid of him,” he said, turning on his heel and leaving them alone.

Clint was still staring after him with wide, horrified eyes when Barney grabbed him by the collar and pulled him deeper into the alley.

“What– Barney, don’t, you can’t–” Clint said frantically, struggling against him. This wasn’t happening, Barney was his _brother_ , he couldn’t–

“Shut up,” Barney snapped, slamming him against a wall. “Listen to me, you’re going to leave and never come back. If Trick finds out you’re alive, you’ll be sorry, you hear?”

Clint blinked at him uncomprehendingly.

“Where am I supposed to go?” he said, feeling numb. The circus was his home, he had nowhere else – _no one_ else.

Barney shrugged, unconcerned. “Figure it out.” 

“You could come too,” he tried with little hope, and his brother laughed.

“Not a chance.”

Clint watched him walk away, and he couldn’t bring himself to be surprised. He was scared and alone and homeless, and maybe it was the shock talking, but part of him–

Part of him was inexplicably relieved.

\---

Retrospectively joining the army was a terrible idea.

It had seemed like a good one at the time. Clint would be helpful there, he would be able to shoot, and with the newly voted Equal Opportunity Act, he would be treated fairly – same as an alpha. He soon found out that was all bullshit: the law had changed, yes, but it would take more than a couple of months for mentalities to evolve, especially in the alpha-dominated world that was the military. Luckily he still was a fast learner.

Clint had a hard time following orders at first. For years he had systematically trained himself out of blindly obeying alphas, ruthlessly quashing those instinctive responses and choosing to ignore _who_ gave the order to focus on _what_ it was instead. That simply didn’t fly in the military – alphas gave the orders, and Clint was expected to follow without batting an eyelash.

It took a while to get used to. 

It wasn’t that Clint had anything against alphas per se – he had something against assholes. In his experience the two were closely related, and the army did little to discourage him of the notion. 

Many alphas chose careers in the armed forces or in law enforcement agencies, attracted to the power that came with it. But command positions were few and far between, and many of them ended up having to follow orders like good betas. It made more than a few bitter and mean, and by the time they got to a rank associated with even the slightest amount of authority, they tended to lord it over everyone else. 

Assholes.

The one good thing about the army was that it was easy not to get noticed. As long as he followed the rules, Clint was just one of many, and no one paid him any attention. 

So he pretended. He pretended he was the perfect beta, following orders like it was his calling. He pretended he was a good shot but not a great one – just enough to get where he wanted. He played the long game and jumped through the right hoops, and it was all depressingly easy. He hit his targets slightly off centre sometimes, and missed on purpose every now and then when it didn’t matter and he was sure he would get a second shot. After all, it wouldn’t do for people to start saying he was too good at it.

And then SHIELD had to come and screw with his perfect record.

\---

They were in a middle of a warzone, their time neatly divided between utter boredom and bursts of adrenalin, when his squad got new orders: to provide back-up for a ‘guest’ – no name given.

Clint watched the guy during the briefing. He was wearing civvies, which meant spook – only journalists and spies wore civilian clothing out here, and the former had gotten bored with the conflict and left a while ago. The man wasn’t their usual CIA guy though, an unassuming beta not at all suited for field work. Either he had gotten himself killed and this was his replacement, or another agency had come to play in their sandbox.

The new guy was alpha through and through, and just looking at him made Clint’s hackles go up. Not that his feelings mattered, obviously, but for once he found himself in perfect agreement with the rest of his squad: spies were spies, and a waste of military resources to boot.

To give credit where credit was due, the guy looked about as unimpressed with them as they were with him, and he started arguing with their CO as soon as they were dismissed – something about not needing an escort, Clint heard before he got out of earshot, and he mentally groaned. Alphas, always trying to prove they had the bigger knot. All the posturing made his head hurt. And now they were stuck babysitting a guy who didn’t want them around and would probably try to ditch them the first chance he got. 

It would be a miracle if he didn’t get them all killed.

Their job was simple enough: they were the back-up for a meet, there to be dissuasive but ultimately non-threatening. Clint wasn’t sure how they were supposed to manage _that_ – they were guys wearing Kevlar and carrying assault rifles, looking threatening was almost unavoidable under those circumstances. Who planned a classified meeting in the middle of a fucking war anyway?

Of course, things did not go according to plan.

They were holding position half a klick away from the meet when it all went to shit. There was an explosion, and their charge and the man he was meeting both went down. In the next heartbeat the squad was taking fire, leaving them to scramble for better cover while trying to shoot back. Looking down the sight of his rifle, Clint blocked out the sound of bullets ricocheting around him, and calmly took out the targets he could see – at least in the middle of a fire fight, no one paid too close attention to how accurate he was. Eventually he risked a glance towards the site of the explosion, and was surprised to find their guy on his feet, stumbling around for cover. He was one lucky bastard – Clint had thought for sure he was a goner. Half his face was covered in blood, and he probably had a few broken bones if the way he was holding himself was any indication – maybe some internal bleeding too –, but he was still standing, and that was something.

Rock exploded next to Clint’s head, and he had to duck and turn his attention back to more pressing matters, taking out a couple more shooters. When he next had time to look towards their guy again, he found him struggling against someone wielding a knife. Clint’s pulse shot up at the sight – there was no way he was going to make it, not with his injuries. Clint could take his assailant out from here, except–

Except it was an impossible shot, one he shouldn’t be able to make from his position. Questions may be asked, especially if the CIA was involved. But Clint wasn’t going to let some poor schmuck die just so he could keep his comfortable anonymity, so he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before squeezing the trigger. The hostile fell, and their guy looked almost startled before he did the smart thing and dropped down, leaving Clint to hope no one had noticed in the clusterfuck the whole thing had become.

In the end reinforcement arrived, and they dispatched what was left of their ambushers. The guy was medevaced, situation critical. And Clint waited for the other shoe to drop – for someone to say something. 

Nothing happened. 

Weeks went by and they rotated back home, and nothing kept on happening. 

Slowly, Clint relaxed, thinking everything would remain as it was. And he kept right on thinking that until halfway through his next leave. 

He was at the range relaxing with his bow when he saw the guy again, leaning against a wall and watching him. He was wearing an eyepatch now, and the scars around it were still pink.

“Are you as good with a bow as you are with a rifle?” he asked, and Clint considered lying for a split second before the knowing look on the guy’s face dissuaded him.

“Better,” he said truthfully, and the guy nodded, satisfied.

“Name’s Fury. I’m with SHIELD. You saved my ass back there.”

The non-sequitur made Clint blink. “How do you know it was me?”

“I work with the best. They make it their business to know, and so do I.”

Clint held himself perfectly still, waiting for the guy – Fury – to get to the point. He hadn’t tracked him down just to chitchat. He wanted something, had to, and that made Clint uneasy.

But Fury didn’t say anything, and the silence stretched between them until Clint took it upon himself to ask: “What do you want?”

“I want you to work for me.” 

Clint frowned. No one had ever wanted him for anything. He was invisible, and that was how he liked it.

“Why?”

“Like I said, I work with the best.” The guy pushed himself away from the wall and walked up to Clint, looking at him closely. “And because you’re wasted on the army. You need more of a challenge.”

“And you can provide that?” Clint asked derisively. 

His tone made Fury grin, dangerous and full of teeth. Clint’s instincts were screaming at him to step back, look down, but he ignored them, staring the alpha down. It was the first time he had allowed himself to do that – to be himself, consequences be damned – and it felt great. And it only made Fury’s smile widen. 

“I’ll be expecting you at our New York headquarters on Monday morning,” he said, handing him an envelope. “Address is in there.” 

Clint glanced inside briefly. There were some paper and a plane ticket. Jesus. 

“I still owe a year to the army,” he had to point out, because as much as he was tempted, he couldn’t just go AWOL. 

Fury made a dismissive hand gesture. “No, you don’t,” he said. “See you Monday.”

He left, and Clint stared after him with something close to grudging respect.

Didn’t change his mind about alphas though. Still assholes. 

Definitely.

\---

SHIELD wasn’t all that different from the military, apart from all the ways it was. It had the same hierarchy and rigid command structure, it had missions in god-forsaken places and too many people crammed together in one place. But it also had handlers and team leaders who weren’t all alphas. It even had omegas.

It wasn’t perfect. SHIELD still had more than its fair share of alphas, even among Clint’s classmates through basic training. While he had to grudgingly admit some of them weren’t that terrible, SHIELD didn’t recruit on personality alone and so there were a few bad apples. They mostly ignored Clint – he was a beta, beneath their notice –, harassing the omegas in their class instead.

In a way, omegas had it easy compared to betas. Well, no, that wasn’t actually true. They had had it so much worse for centuries, but as mentalities had evolved, it had become preposterous to think of them as just a convenient hole for alphas to fuck and impregnate. It hadn’t happened overnight, but eventually society – alphas – had seen that too. Omegas were protected by the law now, and they had public opinion on their side. Sure, there was a minority of backward assholes who longed for the return of the good old days – including at SHIELD, apparently – but it would never happen.

It wasn’t the same for betas. Their situation had never been appalling. They weren’t mistreated. _“Betas have always been followers,”_ people said. _“There is nothing wrong with that.”_ And the thing was, it _was_ in their nature, and no amount of suppressants would change that – unlike heats, which could be controlled and swept under the rug, no drug would ever stop a beta from being exactly what he or she was. Why, then, put them in charge of anything, when a stern word from any alpha would make them change their mind?

It was bullshit, of course, but that kind of attitude wasn’t going to change any time soon – if only because the majority of betas didn’t have any demands, or feel like they had anything to prove. Some did rise above the rest, and Clint would hear about it on the news sometimes, about a _beta_ professor getting tenure at some big university, or a _beta_ engineer whose invention may revolutionise their energy grid, or some brand new _beta_ artist who had an opening in town. They could do it now, the Equal Opportunity Act had given them that much, and maybe it had to be enough.

Besides, Clint was too much of a cynic to believe trying to change the world would do any good. Assholes would always be assholes.

When he saw Mitchell and O’Reilly ganging up on Johnson yet again, he stifled the urge to walk over and deck them. They had been making derogatory comments about her for days now, and telling them to shut up hadn’t gotten them anywhere. Johnson was tiny, but she was also in Clint’s hand-to-hand class, and he knew she could take care of herself. Swooping in like a knight in shining armour would be fucking disrespectful to her skills and abilities. Still he watched, in case she needed back-up or a character witness or something. 

All it took was Mitchell putting a hand on her shoulder, and she was perfectly within her rights to use force to take him down – which she did, before looking challengingly at O’Reilly, who seemed too gobsmacked to do anything but stare at his groaning buddy on the floor.

Clint smirked, giving Johnson a thumb-up when she saw him watching, and she grinned back at him.

“You’re Fury’s guy, right?” she asked him over lunch after they had both been called into their supervisor’s office to explain what had happened – and gotten yelled at for not reporting Mitchell’s and O’Reilly’s behaviour earlier.

Clint raised a surprised eyebrow at her. Fury had recruited him, yes, but he hadn’t seen a lot of him since he had starting training. When he had, the guy had been ordering random people around, and it had hardly seemed like a good time to start a conversation.

“Everyone knows,” Johnson told him. “I hear it was kind of a big deal. He’s, like, a legend around here. Probably doesn’t have more than a few years of field work left in him, but people say he’ll end up Director someday.”

Clint started to pay more attention to gossip after that, and he and Johnson would compare what they had overheard a couple of times a week, cross-checking intel and trying to discern truth from myth. There were some pretty outlandish stories out there, and Clint found himself laughing when Johnson recounted how Fury had supposedly gotten his eyepatch. She almost had him convinced, and he had been there.

He involuntarily found himself the object of the rumour mill when Fury showed up with a mission order as soon enough as he graduated. From what Johnson would later tell him, it was unheard of for Fury to handpick someone to go on an op with him – oh, he would take entire teams when the situation required it, but a single back-up, and a beta no less? Never.

“You, with me,” Fury barked, shoving a bag in his hands and walking away without waiting for him to acknowledge the order.

The typical alpha/beta exchange should have rubbed Clint the wrong way, except he had seen enough of Fury around to know it was how he communicated with everybody. He didn’t discriminate in his order giving, and that was startlingly refreshing.

“You were holding back during training,” Fury commented idly when Clint caught up with him, and Clint shrugged.

He had. Oh, he had done better than he would have in the army – that was expected of him now –, but he could have done better still, especially after they had handed him a bow. It was second nature to keep things close to the vest, and Clint couldn’t put aside over two decades of self-conditioning just because someone dangled something shiny in front of him. 

He hadn’t thought Fury had figured it out though.

“I knew it,” Fury said smugly, and Clint realised he _hadn’t_. Well, fuck.

“Don’t worry,” the man went on with a sharp grin. “I’ll train that habit out of you.”

It didn’t take Clint long to figure out that he meant it.

\---

The two of them worked well in the field together. They weren’t a team, not really: Fury did the work, and Clint made sure he stayed alive long enough to do it. How they both went about it was entirely up to them – Clint had no doubt (or rather hoped) Fury followed some sort of plan, but sometimes he had to wonder.

His own job was made exponentially more difficult by how nuts the man was. Oh, he got things done, no doubt about it – usually the hard way, because the asshole seemed to like blowing shit up. But Fury also took great delight in having a mission go to hell around him. In fact, given the pattern of those that did, Clint had to wonder if Fury screwed up on purpose just so Clint would have to scramble and make shots even he didn’t think he had in him. 

And the thing was, it _worked_.

It should have been hell on Clint, and in a way it was. Whenever Fury went on a tangent he found himself with absolutely no clue as to what would happen next, and he should have hated that. But he learned to cope – no matter what went on around him, he found that maintaining complete control over himself was enough, focusing on one target at a time and blocking out the rest. 

He was better than ever, and everyone was starting to see it. 

And he didn’t even care. 

When they were at HQ, Fury was often busy with meetings way above Clint’s clearance, and Clint found himself with too much time on his hands. He didn’t really know anyone, not since Johnson had been assigned to the California office, and he would hardly call the handful of agents he and Fury occasionally worked with acquaintances. So he spent more time training, and got a crash course in backstabbing. Fury, everyone agreed, was going somewhere. Clint, by virtue of being close to him, was an easy target for his supporters and detractors both. _“Fury’s pet”_ , they called him, and Clint shrugged it off. He had been called worse, and Fury seemed to find it hilarious, going as far as to try and pat his head once. Clint showed him his teeth, and he didn’t try it again.

\---

Three years after Clint had joined SHIELD, Fury was promoted to Deputy Director. 

Clint had seen it coming: Fury had been easing out of the field for months, sending him out with larger teams, different handlers – making sure Clint would be covered when he moved on to his desk job. That was how Fury showed he cared.

“I’d better not find out you’re dumbing it down,” Fury growled at him after the official announcement, and Clint wondered if that was what having a friend was like.

He did miss Fury’s special brand of crazy in the field, and Fury must have missed his uncommunicative ass too because they somehow ended up having lunch together in the cafeteria every Friday when they were both on site. It was nice to have someone checking up on him because they wanted to rather than because they had to. And it gave Clint the opportunity to check up on Fury in return – the man worked too much.

Roughly six months after Fury’s promotion, Clint came into the cafeteria one Friday to find Fury already sitting at their table with a guy in an ill-fitting suit in front of him. Clint’s hands tightened on his tray, and he hovered for a second too long, unsure what to do with himself – long enough for Fury to spot him.

“Barton, get your ass over here,” he called out before Clint could turn around and disappear.

“Fuck off, sir,” Clint said fondly, and got a grin in return when he sat down.

Fury was looking mightily pleased with himself, and Clint realised this must be the guy – his guy. Fury had been venting for weeks about an old buddy of his from the Rangers who was resisting his best efforts to sway him into joining SHIELD. He must have found a way to make him change his mind – no one visited HQ for the food. 

“Barton, this is Agent Coulson,” Fury told him. “Phil, Barton.”

The guy – an alpha, no surprise there – nodded at him politely with maybe a hint of curiosity in there as well, and Clint nodded back before addressing Fury.

“So you finally got him to say yes?” he said, keeping a careful eye on the stranger – unknown alphas were always potential threats.

“That I did,” Fury crowed. 

Coulson must really be something.

Clint watched the man throughout lunch, puzzled by what he saw. By all rights – the Rangers, the friendship with Fury –, Coulson should have been a typical alpha, but he didn’t look it. While he had the deeply-rooted self-assurance, he also seemed to be suppressing it, projecting a harmless and non-threatening image instead. He didn’t show any sign of the arrogance some alphas had either, a side effect of the knowledge that they were at the top of the food chain. On the contrary, Coulson looked mild and unassuming, though Clint wasn’t blind – the guy could definitely hold his own in a fight. 

It took Clint a few weeks to realise Coulson wasn’t putting up a good show for his benefit – he purposefully cultivated the misperception with everyone. It shouldn’t have made any sense, except it did – to Clint anyway. He had used the same trick for years, after all. Being underestimated was a powerful weapon.

It soon became clear that Fury’s big plan was to have Coulson take over as Clint’s handler. Clint didn’t really care – him or another, what was the difference? –, though he foresaw possible complications down the line if Coulson turned out to be an asshole who couldn’t deal with a beta questioning stupid orders. After all, Clint had acquired a reputation for being difficult to work with in the past few months for a reason. Well, if that was the case Coulson could go fuck himself – Clint wouldn’t follow him blindly just because he was Fury’s friend.

But Coulson, it turned out, was a pretty nice guy all around, if almost diametrically opposed to Fury. Where Fury was brash, Coulson was reserved, and his ops were precise and planned down to the last minute. In short, he was as much a control freak as Clint was, and being in the field with him was almost restful.

Clint had been worried at first about Coulson losing his shit when all his planning would turn out to be for nothing on that one mission where everything that could go wrong would, but he ended up being good at thinking on his feet too. No wonder Fury had wanted him at SHIELD.

Their first six months as a team went swimmingly well, and Coulson took him out for drinks to celebrate – apparently Fury had told him it was tradition at SHIELD. Clint couldn’t remember Fury taking _him_ out for a beer at their six month mark, and he shook his head fondly. That old meddler, wanting his friends to get along. Clint would be sure to point out how adorable that was the next time he saw him.

At least Coulson was wearing jeans – those suits really were a disaster.

“Your suits are horrible,” he ended up telling him after a couple of beers, and Coulson snorted.

“Yeah, well, I was in the Rangers for fifteen years, it’s not like I had many opportunities to wear one,” he told him, and Clint nodded sagely. 

Christ, he was buzzed after two beers. He was a fucking disgrace.

“You should buy a new one,” he offered. “One that fits. Unless it’s part of the whole unassuming thing – in that case, good job. Though that’s not going to work for long – we are spies, you know.”

Coulson raised an eyebrow at him, half a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and Clint felt inordinarily pleased with himself. Look at him, making friends.

Fury would be so proud, he just might cry.

Or not.

“Buy a suit,” Clint said again, because it was important. “Then you can terrorise the baby agents by being all professional and shit.”

“I do that now,” Coulson pointed out, which… true. He had made another alpha cry the other day. For all that Coulson could do unobtrusive, he could also go alpha on someone in the blink of an eye and have even the most confident of them cowering in front of him. It was a thing of beauty. Still–

“Not in those suits.”

“You really care about the suits,” Coulson said, sounding amused.

Clint nodded emphatically. “They’re terrible suits.”

“I’m starting to get that.”

The next Monday Coulson showed up for work wearing a suit that had to be worth more than a month of his salary, and Clint walked around with a silly smile on his face all day.

\---

By the time Clint hit 30, he had been working with Coulson longer than with Fury, and when people talked about him – which was often –, he was referred to as _Coulson’s_ beta, not Fury’s. Clint wasn’t anyone’s, but he could hardly do better than Coulson, so he just shrugged it off – people would talk, they always did. 

The taunts were few and far between. Even when they weren’t smart enough to fear Clint, people had learned not to dismiss Coulson out of hand. Still, every once in a while, there would be a batch of new recruits stupider than the rest, who thought it would be a good idea to try and needle Clint.

He could tell it was going to be one of those days when three alphas cornered him in the locker room.

“You’re that guy, right? Coulson’s little bitch? So what’s your deal there? You like taking his knot like some sick fuck pretending he’s an omega? First Fury, now Coulson, is that how it is?”

Clint ignored them as they grew less and less imaginative – it was nothing he hadn’t heard before –, and focused on packing his gym bag so he could get the hell out of there. He wasn’t counting on anyone walking in on them – they always had someone watching the door. They may be bullies, but they weren’t stupid. Except apparently this bunch was.

“What the hell is going on here?” Coulson barked, and Clint would have enjoyed the way it made the other three snap at attention except he was too angry for that.

He grabbed his bag and shoved past all of them, walking away as fast as he could without breaking into a run. In the end it didn’t matter: Coulson caught up with him quickly, and he looked so concerned and protective – so very _alpha_ –

Clint hated it. 

And he was so in love with him it hurt. 

It wasn’t a new thought, and Clint didn’t know how to deal with it.

At least when alphas disliked him for making them question their superiority, Clint didn’t activate that ‘protect the little people’ crap. The flipside to all the dominant bullshit, it was almost worse as far as Clint was concerned. He didn’t _need_ anyone to take care of him, and he didn’t _want_ to want it either, not even from Coulson. And he certainly didn’t want his help – those guys were just assholes running their mouth, it was what they _did_. Clint could deal with it – had been dealing with it. Coulson stepping in would just make things worse.

 _Fuck_.

“How long has this been going on?” Coulson asked, and when Clint glanced at him Coulson had the balls to be looking surprised that it was even happening. In what world did that guy live anyway?

“I can handle it,” Clint replied shortly.

“Not what I asked.”

Clint laughed, the sound bitter and utterly devoid of humour. “Ever since I got here.”

“That’s unacceptable.”

The worst part was, Clint knew Coulson meant it, every damn word, because Coulson was a good guy and he cared about Clint. But he was also an alpha, and as a result he would never _get it_.

“Wake up, Coulson,” he spat. “I’m not like you. I’m a beta, you know what that means? It means every asshole in this place gets to assume I’m a good little soldier who can’t think for himself, and there is nothing I can do about it.”

“Clint…”

“Don’t,” he said sharply. “Look, Phil, I know you were trying to help, but don’t, okay? Let me handle it.”

Phil didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded anyway. 

Clint sighed, deflating a little. “I’m going to the range,” he mumbled, and took off.

Coulson didn’t follow him.

\---

It was pure coincidence that their next assignment turned out to be one Natasha Romanoff – lucky for her too. Clint was still slightly off balance, and looking down at his target, all he could think was that she reminded him of his mother. His mom hadn’t been a redhead, and she hadn’t been a Russian assassin either, but she had worn the same resigned and hopeless expression most days of her life, and Clint couldn’t.

He just couldn’t.

So instead of loosing an arrow into her chest when Coulson gave him the go-ahead, he said:

“Sorry sir, there is something I’ve got to do first.”

And then he turned his comm. off.

It was a stupid thing to do, and it wasn’t fair on Phil, but Clint did it anyway. It took him three days to get Romanoff to agree to come in with him, and by the time he made contact again, Coulson was livid. He was perfectly polite to Romanoff, almost apologising for the cuffs – _“yes, I’m afraid they are necessary”_ –, but he ignored Clint for the duration of the flight home, only addressing him when they got to HQ to tell him to wait for him in his office while he got Romanoff to lock-up.

Clint didn’t have to wait long. He knew what was coming, and he knew he was going to hate it. It was one thing to find Coulson going alpha on another alpha entertaining, but it was going to be something else entirely to have all that intensity directed solely at him.

He was almost holding his breath by the time Coulson came in and quietly closed the door behind him. After all that building tension, the dressing-down of a lifetime that followed was almost a relief – except in all the ways it really wasn’t.

It was hardly the first time Coulson was pissed at him, and the reverse had happened more than once too, but this was different. This was an alpha reprimanding a beta, and Clint endured it standing at attention, staring fixedly at a spot on Coulson’s wall. He knew, deep down, that this was happening because losing contact with Clint for three days had scared Phil. That knowledge, however, didn’t make it easier to bear. 

Coulson didn’t know what he was doing to him – how could he? –, how hard it was for Clint to keep himself from taking a swing or running away, his usual ways of dealing when an alpha pulled too hard on his repressed beta instincts. He hadn’t had to use his tricks in years, but of course Coulson would be the one to try and make him break his winning streak.

By the time the man stopped for breath, Clint was almost swaying on his feet, so caught up with fighting against two diametrically opposed urges that he barely noticed.

“Clint?” Phil said with a slight frown, realising something wasn’t quite right.

“With all due respect, _sir_ , please stop talking before I do something we’ll both regret,” Clint gritted out, and Phil actually took a step back.

“I’m calling the Director,” he said, some worry creeping into his voice.

Fury must have been on his way to discuss the Romanoff situation – or maybe the Barton situation – because he got there in thirty seconds flat, and Clint knew for a fact that it took one minute and thirty-four seconds to go from his office to Coulson’s at a brisk walk.

“Did you break my guy, Coulson?” Fury said as he took stock of the situation, and then, turning towards Clint: “Barton, sit the fuck down and take a deep breath.”

And there it was, the familiar way Fury had of handing out orders. He really had a way with people – he certainly had a way with Clint: the complete lack of any kind of weight behind the words made him relax instantly.

He sat, and breathed, and the whole room exhaled with him.

“So you want to tell me what the hell you were thinking?” Fury asked Clint once he didn’t feel like he was about to bolt anymore.

“She wanted a way out. I gave her one,” he said, and Fury’s eyebrow shot up.

“Did she now?”

“Yeah.”

“Very well. You’re dismissed,” Fury said, and Clint didn’t need to be told twice. 

He knew it wouldn’t be the end of it – there would be debriefs and interviews and possibly a couple of mandatory sessions with Psych. Hopefully they would stick to the thing with Romanoff, and let him ignore the other.

He risked a glance in Coulson’s direction on his way out, but the man wasn’t looking at him.

Probably for the best.

\---

It took them a while to get past it. Coulson didn’t know _what_ he had done, and Clint tried to explain, but it was hard to put into words. He could hardly tell him not to yell at him like he meant it when he screwed up – it was well within his prerogatives as his handler. That deep-seated incomprehension was why people usually stuck to their own kind when it came to friendships. Things could get very messy very quickly otherwise.

While everything settled down, Clint went on a couple of missions with Hill, Fury’s new protégée – an omega who reminded him of Johnson, busting alphas’ balls so hard it was hilarious to watch –, and found himself hanging out with Natasha. She was scary and beautiful and incredibly relaxing to be around – not something that had been said about her often, and she seemed to find him a little disconcerting. 

Natasha didn’t fall anywhere Clint could discern on the alpha/beta/omega spectrum, and he tried really hard not to think about what must have been done to her to get that result. It unnerved most people, but to Clint it was almost comforting to have someone around whom he didn’t have to worry about his reactions.

It took SHIELD months to trust her, and a few more before they sent her out in the field. Unsurprisingly Clint went with her – and, by extension, Coulson. Clint didn’t know whether that was because no one else would, or whether it was Fury’s way of getting back at him for all the headaches he had caused him lately, but he didn’t care either way – they worked well together, and he knew they would only get better as they got used to one another’s quirks in the field.

Things between him and Coulson were back to normal, and that was a relief too. Clint had missed him – on ops and outside of work. 

Really, what more could he ask for? 

If he looked at Phil sometimes and found himself wishing for something he couldn’t name, well, Clint was a reasonable guy. He knew what he could and could not have. 

The thing was, alpha men didn’t settle down with guys like Clint – if betas were hardwired for obedience, alphas were hardwired for reproduction. If women didn’t do it for them, they went for omega men, who could give them kids and were equipped to deal with their heats. There were alpha pairs in high stress environments like the military – a meeting of equals where staying alive mattered more than starting a family –, but those were taboo and, as far as Clint knew, rarely survived the return home.

An alpha and a beta together, both of them guys? No way. If Clint had been a woman, then sure, no problem. But they were men, and old prejudices died hard – men who weren’t omegas weren’t supposed to get knotted.

Besides, no matter how he felt, Clint wasn’t sure he _wanted_ to be with Phil, what with all the bullshit they would have to deal with and the obvious complications. For all his qualities, the man was what he was, and Clint had his reasons for never dating alphas. Then again, it was Phil, and Clint _trusted_ him – if there ever was someone who could make him change his mind, it was him.

Either way he was screwed.

He caught himself staring sometimes – at Phil’s mouth, at his hands, at the way his suits fitted him perfectly _everywhere_. Who would have thought his self-appointed mission to get Phil to wear better suits half a decade ago would come back to bite him in the ass? 

It was unacceptable. Clint had to get himself back under control before people started to notice – some already had.

“You’re being an idiot,” Natasha told him as she was wiping the floor with him. 

Clint didn’t need to ask her to elaborate – she had been addressing this particular topic the same way for weeks.

“Do we have to talk about this now?” he asked, because he’d rather focus on not getting his ass kicked. Then again, Natasha would probably point out he needed the practice. Bad guys were rarely kind enough to wait ‘til he wasn’t distracted to attack.

At least the gym was deserted – then again it would be. It was 2 am. Clint was still jetlagged from a solo mission in Tokyo, and who knew why Nat was still up – she had plenty of reasons to want to avoid sleep. 

She shot him a look, feinting right before going left and _up_ , and Clint scrambled to duck and follow.

“Fine, just get it out,” he sighed, before taking the initiative and keeping her busy with defence to shut her up temporarily. She grinned, not fooled for one second, and did something that left Clint blinking at the ceiling, winded and with no idea of how he had ended up on the ground.

“You’re being an idiot,” she said again, looming over him with her arms crossed over her chest disapprovingly. “You want him, he wants you – it’s child’s play.”

Clint kicked out, managing to catch her off-guard, and she landed on the mat next to him with an ‘oof’. 

“It’s not that simple,” he told her, making no move to follow on his advantage. 

He knew Phil wanted him. He wasn’t blind. But want and love were two very different things, and even if Phil _thought_ he was in love with him, how long would it be until he realised playing house with Clint wasn’t what he wanted after all? Beta, remember? 

Yes, Clint wanted to be with him. It had taken a lot of soul searching to admit as much – to himself anyway. But it didn’t change anything, and the fact that he knew Phil would never broach the subject himself made it easy to live in denial. Phil was his superior, both as his handler and as an alpha, and he knew Clint had issues with the latter. No, he would never say anything, and Clint really should follow his example.

If Nat would just _let him_.

“You’re scared,” she said, causing his hackles to go up involuntarily before he deliberately relaxed. One day, that childish taunt would stop working – not today though, and from her smug grin Nat knew that too.

“He’s an alpha, I’m a beta,” he said curtly. “I think that sums up the situation pretty well.”

She shrugged. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It just… it doesn’t work that way.” How was he supposed to explain centuries of biological conditioning? It would end up sounding ridiculous, and Clint _knew_ that. Hell, he knew _Nat_ knew that, and that it was the point of her question. But that was the thing with instincts – when people stopped and tried to think about them logically, they rarely made sense. And yet, one couldn’t simply decide to go against them one morning like it was nothing. It took time and effort and perseverance – Clint would know.

“Clearly, it does,” Nat said.

Clint didn’t know how to answer that.

\---

The situation remained at a standstill for a few more weeks, until Natasha pushed it one step further – one step too far, maybe – by making him and Phil go on a date.

Of course, it wasn’t meant to be a date. It was supposed to be one of their monthly team dinners, except Nat never showed up. Somehow she had managed to convince Fury to send her to Rome – like _that_ would save her, or Fury for that matter. Clint would bet he was in on it.

“I’m going to kill her,” Clint said with feelings when he read her text.

“Not if I get there first,” Phil muttered, putting his own phone down, and an awkward silence ensued, Phil watching him while Clint kept his eyes firmly on the table cloth.

“We can go, if you want,” Phil eventually offered with something like resignation in his voice, and Clint found he couldn’t bear to hear it so he finally looked up.

“No, it’s fine. I guess we need to talk,” he said ruefully, rubbing the back of his neck. “Can we go somewhere else though?”

It had been Natasha’s turn to choose the restaurant, and maybe she had thought it would be romantic, but fancy places really weren’t Clint’s thing – or Phil’s, for that matter.

“Pizza?” Phil said, and Clint shot him a quick smile.

“Sure.”

Phil’s place was closer and they had taken his car from HQ. Going back to his place seemed like the logical thing to do, and so Clint was surprised when he turned the car towards Clint’s apartment instead after they had picked up their dinner.

He smiled slightly. Phil was giving him the home advantage. It was nice of him, but unnecessary. Alphas were the territorial ones, and besides, Phil’s place had become home a long time ago.

“So…” Clint said after they had eaten, leaning back against his couch in a pretence of relaxation. “Do you want to start?”

Phil looked at him for a long time, as if trying to figure out what was going on in Clint’s head, and then he said:

“I would like to take you out on a date.” They were past pretending otherwise.

“Why?”

The question seemed to take Phil aback, and Clint elaborated.

“I’m not looking for grand declarations of love here, but you can’t blame me for wondering what’s in it for you. I’m just a beta.”

“You’re so much more than that,” Phil shot back, looking almost angry, and Clint shrugged. Maybe, maybe not – that wasn’t really the point.

“Still, I can’t be what you want.”

“Don’t tell me what I want, Clint,” he said, voice still sharp, before sighing. “Tell me why not. Please.”

Did he really have to spell it out?

“Well, I can’t give you kids,” he said, going for the obvious and staring down at his hands. 

“I don’t care about that, Clint.”

Clint’s head jerked up. That couldn’t be right. “You don’t?” he asked, surprise leaking into his tone.

Phil shook his head with a slight smile. 

“How is that even possible?” Clint said, and Phil rolled his eyes at him.

“Surely if there can be betas who disobey orders, there can be alphas who don’t want children,” he said pointedly.

Clint felt himself flush a little. Phil was right, of course. _He_ should know better than to make assumptions.

“What about heats?” he said, going for the other obvious thing. His body wasn’t exactly built for that either. Sure, some guys did it anyway despite the stigma. But even putting anatomy aside, Clint didn’t know if _he_ could do it. “I don’t–”

“I know,” Phil stepped in quickly. “I wouldn’t ask you to. Can we just… try the dating part? See how that goes? And figure out the rest as we go along?”

And Clint… Clint was tired of wanting and not having. Maybe it _would_ blow up in their face, but they could also die on their next assignment and then they would have spent all that time worrying for nothing. He would just have to get what he could, and live with the consequences – good or bad.

“Yeah, okay,” he said, suddenly feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

“Yes?”

Phil’s hopeful look transformed into a smile at Clint’s nod of confirmation, and it was so breathtakingly beautiful that Clint decided he didn’t need air anyway. He took hold of Phil’s shirt and yanked him forward, almost smashing their faces together in his eagerness. Their lips found each other eventually, and Clint moaned into Phil’s mouth as the kiss grew hot and hungry and _messy_ , neither of them ready to give in to the other and both enjoying the challenge.

When they pulled apart, foreheads pressed together and fingers clutching at now wrinkled clothes, Clint wanted more.

“When can I take you out for dinner?” Phil panted against his mouth, and Clint laughed, giddy with too many emotions.

“Maybe _I_ ’ll take you out,” he teased. “Later though. For now…” 

He pushed himself off the couch, sinking to his knees in front of Phil. They wanted it too much – had waited too long – to be patient now. After a quick squeeze that made Phil buck into his hand, swearing, Clint made short work of opening Phil’s pants, reaching past his underwear to pull his cock out. He could feel Phil’s eyes on him the whole time, and when he met them he caught a beautifully raw expression on his face. 

Clint grinned and kissed him quickly again before grabbing his wallet for a condom. Then he was rolling it on Phil, their breathing going a little haywire at the thought of what would come next, and Clint spared them both the wait, bending down and taking him in his mouth.

Phil groaned his name, sinking back against the cushions as Clint sucked lightly on the head. He didn’t particularly enjoy the taste of latex, but it was easy to ignore as he started a bobbing motion over Phil’s cock, the helpless little sounds the man was making more than enough to make up for it. 

When Clint stole a glance at him from under his eyelashes, he found that Phil had his eyes closed, a look of pure concentration on his face that made Clint’s cock twitch in his pants. He reached out to where Phil’s fingers were digging into his own thighs, placing his hands over Phil's, and relaxed his throat. He went slow – he hadn’t done that trick in a while and wasn’t sure he would remember how, but it didn’t seem to matter. He took all of him in, causing Phil to cry out and try to arch towards him when the head of his cock slid into Clint’s throat. Clint had anticipated it and held him down, and when he looked up again from where his nose was pressed against Phil’s pubic hair, he found he had all his attention.

“Clint, oh, that’s–” Phil gasped, staring at his mouth and trailing off as he lost track of what he was saying.

Clint would have smiled had he been able to. Instead, he pulled back slowly until only the tip of Phil's cock was in his mouth, enjoying the moan it got him and the heat of Phil’s eyes on him. He breathed in through his nose before surging forward again, swallowing him down. He did it again and again, until his jaw ached and Phil was shaking with need, fighting for both breath and control – Clint wasn't going to let him have either. The rush of making Phil come apart was too much of a turn-on, and his own cock throbbed between his legs as he longed to reach down and get a hand on himself. That would have to wait.

“Clint, fuck, you feel so good,” Phil panted, and Clint's only answer was to take him down his throat again. “Clint!”

Feeling like he had it under control, he relaxed his hold on Phil’s thighs. Phil swore and took the offer for what it was, his hips twisting up even as one of his hands came up to cup the back of Clint’s head. Then he was moving, fucking Clint’s mouth with short, powerful thrusts, his breathing harsh and irregular. He was still careful, his hand heavy but not restricting even as he got closer and closer. The gentleness almost undid Clint and he moaned helplessly around his cock, and _that_ was what finally pushed Phil over the edge, coming into the condom with a drawn-out groan.

Clint gave him as long as he could bear before he let his cock slip from his mouth with an obscene sound and sat back on his heels, pushing a desperate hand down his pants to stroke himself frantically. Less a second later, Phil was there, sinking to his knees in front of him. There wasn’t nearly enough room between the couch and Clint, but he wasn’t going to complain when Phil wrapped his hand around Clint’s and took over. He jerked him off quickly, rough and tight and _perfect_ , taking his mouth for a sloppy kiss that left Clint breathless, his fingers digging into Phil’s back.

Clint was too close to last, and indeed it didn’t take more than a few strokes before he was coming, burying his shout in Phil’s shoulder. He slumped against him, fingers still bunched into the fabric of his shirt as he tried to catch his breath, Phil’s arm wrapped around his chest keeping him close. Safe. 

He didn’t know how long they stayed there, but eventually Clint pulled back and pushed himself to his feet, tugging Phil along with him. Together they stumbled to the bedroom, and slept. 

\---

Their relationship wasn’t always easy, but they wanted it to work, and so they blundered their way along. They inevitably made mistakes, correcting them as they went, and had more than one argument about it. They had different expectations – or, in Clint’s case, no expectation at all since he was still half-convinced Phil would change his mind, which turned out to be just as problematic as Phil wanting things Clint sometimes had trouble with.

So they compromised, found things they both liked or could agree on. Clint found he didn’t mind letting Phil take care of him, as long as it didn’t come off as patronising or overbearing, and only when they were at home. And Phil had to accept that only time would convince Clint he wasn’t going anywhere.

They were good, great even. Nat kept smirking at them, and Fury did his own form of ribbing – subtly, because it wouldn’t do for people to suspect SHIELD’s Director was a closet romantic.

And then one day, about four months after he and Phil had started dating, Clint came back from an incredibly boring six hour shift on a rooftop to find their back-up team giving Phil a wide berth.

He didn’t think much of it at first – every once in a while, Phil did something that reminded them he was more of a badass than all of them combined, and reactions varied. Phil listened to his report, looking as bland as ever. When the beeping of his alarm interrupted Clint, he just waved at him to continue and grabbed an auto-injector and a pre-packaged alcohol swab from his kit. His attention never wavering, he injected himself in the arm, and Clint faltered for a split second when he realised what was going on, before rallying as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Because it wasn’t out of the ordinary.

While SHIELD tried to keep its alphas and omegas home-based when their heat was coming up, being in the field when it hit couldn’t always be avoided, and they took suppressants if it happened, or when they couldn’t afford to take time off to fuck it out due to a time-sensitive project – which, it being SHIELD, was often. Really, it was hardly the first time Clint had seen Phil take suppressants. In fact, thinking back, the last time had been… yep, six months ago in Berlin. 

But it was different now that they were together. That was two heats Phil had suppressed in a row, which meant he would have to let the next one play out unless he wanted Medical to get on his back about it. Which meant– Clint didn’t know what it meant. Except that it now felt like they were living on borrowed time with a six month deadline looming on the horizon.

They would have to have that talk now.

They completed the mission and went home. They had pizza, and they sat on Clint’s couch, unconsciously recreating the scene from the last time the subject had come up.

“So, heats,” Clint said briskly. “What do we do next time it happens?”

“What do _you_ want to do?” Phil asked.

“I don’t– I can’t–” Clint ran a frustrated hand through his hair. Guys who weren’t omegas weren’t supposed to do _that_ – and yes, Clint was aware of how hypocritical it was to hold on to those societal values when he had rejected everything else. But it was easier to convince himself that was the reason for his uncertainty rather than to admit the idea made him uneasy. The lack of control on his part when _it_ would happen was scary – it shouldn’t be, because it was Phil and he trusted him, and yet those old fears were still there, lurking at the back of his mind. He didn’t want to feel like that, and yet he didn’t know if he would be able to move past it.

“It’s okay, Clint, I know.” There was no trace of condemnation or resentment in Phil’s voice, only acceptance, and yet Clint still felt like crap. “I wouldn’t ask you to. I can… take care of it.”

“You can’t be on suppressants every time you go into heat,” he pointed out. “It’s not safe.”

“There are… places I can go,” Phil said, not looking at him. “I’ve been there before.”

Oh.

 _Oh_. 

Of course.

Clint knew the kind of places Phil was talking about, everyone did. There were clubs that specialised in a certain clientele, and alphas and omegas who didn’t have a partner could go there during a heat to pick someone up – there were always plenty of willing bodies eager to help them out. 

It was probably for the best. Phil would get what he needed there. Thinking about him with someone else felt wrong, but then he could hardly ask him not to do it, not when he wasn’t willing to provide an alternative and there was no other option – while not having sex during a heat wouldn’t kill Phil, it would still be highly unpleasant, and the flood of heat hormones without any of the biofeedback provided by sex could be dangerous.

“Okay,” Clint said with a jerky nod.

“Okay,” Phil repeated.

And that was that.

\---

Over the next six months Clint tried to act normally – tried not to obsess about it, knowing it wouldn’t help. They would be fine, he tried to convince himself. This was just another hurdle, and they would get over it. It wouldn’t change anything. 

Still, the thought of Phil with someone else – someone more _appropriate_ – kept intruding, always followed closely by the fear that it would make him realise he’d rather be with someone who could be what he needed full time. 

Really, it was no wonder Natasha started calling him an idiot again. 

Maybe he should try it. Do it once and see. And yeah, maybe it would suck, and maybe he would hate it – but then again maybe not. At least he’d know for sure instead of wondering about it, and he would be able to make an informed decision. It was _Phil_ , for fuck’s sake – it would be fine either way. He loved him, and he trusted him. Yes, he could do it. He _wanted_ to.

But every time Clint thought he had made up his mind and opened his mouth to ask Phil how he would feel about it – maybe _he_ ’d rather not, after all –, he found himself tongue-tied and unsure all over again. Now that the subject had been settled, bringing it back up was incredibly hard. Besides, coming to a decision in his head was a lot easier than saying it out loud, and he couldn’t shake the stupid notion that Phil would judge him for it. Clint may not care about what people thought about him, but Phil’s opinion mattered. _‘Next time,’_ he would think. _‘I’ll talk to him next time.’_

Then one Friday morning he woke up to a note from Phil telling him they were on stand-down for the next four days, and it was too late to say anything.

Clint spent the day wandering around his apartment aimlessly, trying not to think about where Phil was or what – _who_ – he was doing. This was his own doing, he should have said something. He should have tried, damn it, and now Phil– 

Why the fuck hadn’t he said something?

Maybe if he had been at HQ he would have been able to think about something else, but alphas’ and omegas’ partners got the same mandatory four day leave – three for the heat, one to recuperate – their lovers did. Obviously decision-makers hadn’t had Clint’s situation in mind when the law was written, but it was what it was. If he showed up at HQ now, he risked Fury going all concerned on him, and the man was appalling at being supportive. 

So instead Clint stayed at home, his mind stuck on tiny and inconsequential details, like the fact that Phil had forgotten his phone, or how they would have to go back to condoms after this – if there was an after. 

He was almost grateful when someone knocked late in the afternoon – probably Natasha coming to check up on him. Clint mustered a smile and opened the door. 

It was Phil.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, “I know you don’t want me here.”

“What are you doing here?” Clint asked at the same time, because Phil was supposed to be fucking a pretty omega right now. He wasn’t supposed to be standing in his living room, flushed and a little sweaty.

“I’m sorry, I tried, I did, but I didn’t want any of them. I just want you. And I know you don’t, not when I’m like this, but I had to tell you. I don’t _have_ to have sex when I’m in heat, or I’ll take suppressants, or –”

“I want to do it,” Clint blurted out over Phil’s babbling, and Phil abruptly stopped talking, gawking at him almost comically.

Clint didn’t feel like laughing though.

“What?” Phil said.

Clint squared his shoulders, feeling more confident. Phil _wanted_ him, even when he was in heat and his instincts should say otherwise. That had to mean something, right? 

“I said I’ll do it.”

But Phil shook his head. “I’m not asking– Clint, you don’t have to, I know how you feel about–” he trailed off, scrubbing his face with both hands. There was something raw on his face that broke Clint’s heart a little, and he took advantage of the silence to admit softly:

“I don’t want you sleeping with other people.”

“I know,” Phil said just as softly, “I won’t. But you can’t decide to do this just because of that, or because you think I’ll leave if you don’t.”

“It’s not –” Clint tried to interject before shaking his head, frustrated by his inability to do this right. He was saying all the wrong things. “Phil, I love you,” he said, starting over. “And yeah, maybe I’ll hate it, but maybe I won’t, and I won’t know until I try. If you’d rather sleep with an omega when you’re in heat, that’s fine, I’ll learn to deal with it, but you’re here so obviously you’d rather not. Besides, you’re not doing it _to_ me, _I’m_ doing it _for_ you, okay? You’ve got to trust me to know my own mind.”

Phil stepped closer, his hands fluttering hesitantly on Clint’s hips. 

“Are you sure?” he asked, and when Clint nodded he wrapped his arms around him in a tight hug. He was hard, had been since Clint had let him in, and Clint could feel all of him. It was more distracting than it usually was. “You can change your mind,” Phil was saying against Clint’s shoulder. “At any time, before I– you know. Just say the word. Promise me.”

“I will, I promise,” Clint said, heart thundering in his chest, and Phil moaned helplessly, hips pushing forward. 

“Have you done it before – with a guy who wasn’t an omega, I mean?” Clint asked breathlessly, walking backward and keeping Phil close until his back hit the wall. 

“A few times with alphas, in the army,” Phil said, pressing their hips together with another moan.

“Did they do it to you?”

Phil shook his head, and Clint had to quell the disappointment that Phil wouldn’t be able to tell him what to expect, wetting his lips nervously.

“It’s going to hurt at first, but they seemed to like it,” Phil said as if reading his mind. He was staring at his mouth, and Clint kissed him.

That at least was familiar, and so was the feel of his cock through two layers of clothing rubbing against his. Maybe there was something a little desperate about the way Phil was thrusting against him, but it was no different from any other time after a mission gone bad, and Clint met him thrust for thrust. 

It was over much quicker than usual. Phil had an excuse, Clint not so much – he couldn’t have cared less.

“I can’t believe you made me come in my pants,” he said, laughing a little and trying to catch his breath at the same time, and Phil had the good grace to look a little sheepish.

They moved things to the bedroom, getting rid of their clothes along the way. By the time they had reached it, Phil was hard again – still? –, and now that he was naked, the main difference from the heat was clearly visible. About a third of the way down, there was a small swelling on his cock that would eventually grow into a knot to keep them tied together after Phil came in an effort to increase the chance of procreation – a moot point in Clint’s case, but tell that to biology. With Phil’s knot still uninflated, it didn’t look so bad, although Clint tried not to think about it too closely.

“Get on your hands and knees,” Phil told him roughly. “It’ll be easier.”

 _‘Easier for whom?’_ Clint almost asked before he got into position and realised that it was indeed easier. He couldn’t see Phil’s cock from there, couldn’t see the knot, and if he couldn’t see it, then maybe he wouldn’t freak out. He _really_ didn’t want to freak out. He wanted to do this for Phil, and maybe his body wasn’t made with that purpose in mind but plenty of guys got knotted – there was no reason why Clint couldn’t do it too. So he regulated his breathing to something approaching normal and forced himself to relax. 

He could almost pretend it was any other day while Phil was prepping him – until he added a fourth finger that made Clint whine. Phil stroked his back with his free hand and waited ‘til Clint unclenched around his fingers before pushing them deeper, keeping it up until they moved in and out easily. He pulled back, leaving Clint empty for a terrifying moment, and then he mounted him.

Phil had used a lot of lube, and he sank in easily, making them both groan. He stopped short of pushing the small knot inside for his first few thrusts, pulling back every time it pressed against Clint’s entrance until Clint stopped involuntarily tensing when it happened. It kept things on familiar territory, and he fucked Clint with steady but shallow twists of his hips until he was ready for the next step.

When Clint started pressing back against it rather than pulling away, Phil stopped holding back and went all the way on his next thrust. The knot hadn’t started swelling yet and it went in easily, but the sheer weirdness of it still made Clint gasp.

Phil froze.

“Okay?” he asked, waiting for Clint to confirm that he was indeed fine to start moving again.

It _was_ okay, just very foreign and utterly unlike anything Clint had ever felt. It didn’t hurt, not really. He could definitely get used to it, get used to the way it made Phil shake and moan and strain against his back, because that was the important part – _Phil_ was.

“So good, so good, Clint. You feel so good. I can’t believe you’re letting me do this…” Phil gasped, more talkative than usual, the words going straight to Clint’s cock. He would let Phil do anything to him, absolutely anything, and that thought was scarier than what they were doing.

“Clint, it’s going to be soon,” Phil warned, his breathing growing short and irregular, and Clint swallowed hard. This was it, his last chance to stop this. Once Phil started to tie, he wouldn’t be able to pull out, no matter what either of them may want – not without inflicting considerably more damage than if he stayed put.

“Do it,” Clint said, and Phil shoved in as far as he could go with a desperate curse, and abruptly stopped moving. 

For a moment nothing happened, and then Clint felt it start to swell inside him, Phil’s fingers digging into his hips in a conscious effort to stay still and not make it worse for him. Clint could feel how Phil was struggling not to move, his body one rigid line of tension against his back, and he appreciated it, relieved that Phil was apparently even more in control of himself when he was in heat than the rest of the time.

It was fine at first – a little uncomfortable, yes, but perfectly manageable. When it grew past discomfort into pain, Clint tried to breathe through it, to think about something else, but it was getting difficult to concentrate on anything but the growing panic inside him.

“God, Clint…” Phil sounded utterly wrecked, but even that wasn’t enough to distract him. 

Clint could handle pain, even one as frighteningly intimate as this. He could even ignore the fear that his body wouldn’t be able to take it after all when it started to feel like Phil’s knot may tear him in two. What was harder to deal with was how terribly open and vulnerable he was feeling, and his complete lack of control over what was happening. What the hell was he doing? It went against everything he was, everything he had worked for, he couldn’t– 

No, he could, he tried to argue with himself. He could because it was _Phil_ and that made it okay. 

Except no, it really didn’t, it was too much, too–

Phil’s hips stuttered forward involuntarily, and the sharp burst of pain cut through Clint’s panic, bringing back to the present and to his own body. He whimpered, his body instinctively trying to shy away from the pain and making it worse – which was a good thing, because it got him to focus on the physical rather than what was going on inside his head, and that he could deal with.

“Sorry, sorry,” Phil panted, his fingers tightening on Clint’s hips to keep him still, oblivious to his – thankfully over – freak-out, and then: “Oh, fuck, oh fuck, _Clint_!”

Phil came with a noise Clint had never heard him make before, and he almost sobbed in relief when he felt it – at least the knot would stop growing now. It seemed to last forever, and Phil held himself rigidly still throughout, until finally it was done and the tension left his body all at once. He pressed his forehead against Clint’s back, his breaths hot against his spine, and kissed the sweaty skin reassuringly.

“Breathe, Clint,” he said, and Clint did, gulping in a mouthful of air and another – when had he stopped?

Some of the pressure inside lessened, and then some more. The pain fell back and Clint kept breathing, relieved that his mind was clear once more. He still had no control, but it didn’t seem so frightening anymore, not now that he was firmly back on the merely uncomfortable side of the equation.

He blinked.

“How long?” he asked, sounding just as rough as Phil.

“Twenty, maybe thirty minutes? We should probably lie down.”

It took a while to manoeuvre them onto their sides. Phil’s orgasm had made him slightly uncoordinated, and Clint was reluctant to move at all when pulling on the knot sent a hot spark of discomfort through his body. But they managed eventually, Phil spooning behind him and cradling him securely to his chest.

Clint tried to take stock of himself. It was still strange to feel so stretched, but now that the urgency behind it was gone it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming. The knot was just there, buried deep inside him and freaking huge, keeping him tied to Phil and making him his in some undeniable way. That thought should not be making Clint’s cock twitch as it did, and he fought back an embarrassed blush. He wasn’t an omega, biological wired to enjoy it, nor did he particularly get off on pain or submission, but the sweet ache of the knot combined with the knowledge that Phil had only wanted him made Clint want to throw rationality to the wind and beg for it all over again.

Talk about learning something new about himself, he thought wryly.

They didn’t speak, not at first. Phil’s breathing slowed as one of his hands rubbed small circles on Clint’s belly. Clint was pretty sure he didn’t know he was doing it, but the significance behind the gesture made him feel hot all over rather than guilty about what he was keeping Phil away from – progress, maybe. He took Phil’s hand, stilling the movement, but kept it right where it was.

“How are you doing?” Phil asked, pressing a kiss under his ear.

“Wasn’t so bad,” he said truthfully, leaving out the sixty seconds that had been and feeling Phil exhale with what had to be relief against his neck.

“Can I try to make it better?” Phil’s hand moved south before stopping, waiting for permission.

“Yeah,” Clint said, and Phil wrapped his hand around his cock.

Clint had gone soft when Phil’s knot had started to swell, and it took a while to stroke him back into full hardness. But Phil knew what he liked, and Clint found himself gasping and trying to remember why thrusting into his hand was a bad idea. He clenched around Phil anyway, seeing stars as it pushed his knot just a tiny bit deeper to press firmly against his prostate. Clint wailed at the sudden wave of pleasure – or was it pain? He couldn’t tell which was which anymore, just that he wanted more, and he found himself rocking back desperately on Phil’s cock to get it.

“God, Clint, be careful, don’t hurt yourself,” Phil pleaded, but he didn’t try to restrict his movements, letting him find his pleasure, and Clint just couldn’t stop. 

“Phil, Phil, Phil,” he sobbed, straining back against him. The knot could barely move, but his entire universe seemed to be centred on getting it _right there_ , and Phil’s name was the only thing he could say, over and over again until it all became too much and he was screaming it instead, coming all over himself.

He was still in a daze when Phil’s knot shrank enough for him to pull out, which he did quickly, causing Clint to whine. Then Phil was turning him around, eyes worried as his hands went everywhere at once, checking him over carefully.

Clint didn’t know if he looked as wrecked as he felt, but whatever was on his face seemed to lessen some of Phil’s anxiety and he pulled Clint into his arms, holding on tightly.

“God, Clint, that was… Are you okay?” He sounded a little wobbly, and Clint nodded against his head before vocalising it – Phil looked like he needed to hear him say it out loud.

“I’m fine. How are _you_?” 

Phil’s laugh was watery. “I’m great,” he said, and kissed him.

 

Clint tried to keep up with Phil’s libido over the next two days. They fucked once on the Saturday, and Phil didn’t tie with him then, resolutely keeping his knot outside of Clint’s body as it swelled. Clint was sore and they switched to other things after that, and by the time he fell asleep that evening, he was exhausted. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had that much sex, and he was almost relieved there was only one day left – and that he was getting Monday off to recover.

He woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Phil jerking off next to him, and he reached out sleepily to give him a sloppy hand. It was gratifying to see how quickly he could get Phil to come even when he was half-asleep and uncoordinated. 

On Sunday Phil fucked him again, bent over the kitchen table when they were supposed to be having breakfast, rutting into him until Clint came explosively and Phil quickly followed. 

He didn’t knot with him then either.

Clint knew that theoretically alphas only needed to knot once during their heat, but he had never heard of any who actually limited themselves to that, and he could only interpret Phil’s reluctance as some form of consideration for him. He had to admit part of him was grateful: as much as he had ended up enjoying himself that first time, some of it had still been scary. Yet he couldn’t deny that every time Phil had fucked him since, there had been excitement mixed with the apprehension when he had felt his knot against his entrance and found himself wondering if Phil would push it inside _this time_. Nor couldn’t he deny the quickly buried disappointment when it hadn’t happened.

He spent most of the day thinking about this conundrum, and when Phil started to kiss him with intent late in the afternoon, he knew what he wanted. 

It didn’t take him long to end up naked and on his back on their bed, moaning helplessly as he watched Phil’s cock disappear inside him. Phil hadn’t fucked him face to face since his heat had started, and so Clint hadn’t been able to see him – hadn’t been able to see his cock moving in and out of him between his legs, the small knot get closer each time before Phil inevitably withdrew. 

Now that he could see, he wanted it so badly he felt himself clench in anticipation.

“Come _on_ ,” he gasped, staring down at where they were joined and arching towards it. 

Phil stopped.

Clint mentally groaned, his head thumping back against a pillow. That was not the reaction he had been hoping for.

“I don’t have to,” Phil said, voice strained with the effort to keep still.

“I _know_ ,” Clint said as patiently as he could – which was not very. “I’m saying you can, if you want. _I_ want you to.”

Phil finally started moving again, though he still looked uncertain, and Clint loved him for being so noble and self-sacrificing, but really how many times did he have to say it?

“Are you sure?”

“Fuck, Phil, don’t make me beg,” Clint groaned.

Phil’s eyes darkened. “Would you?” he asked, voice low and gravelly.

“Give me your fucking knot, damn it!” Clint growled, too turned on to bother with sexy.

It made Phil laugh, but it also got the job done: he put more force into his next thrust than he had before, and he didn’t stop this time. From his angle Clint got to see the knot disappear before he felt it breach him a split second later and Phil bottomed out, and oh, yes, _finally_.

“Oh, God,” Phil moaned, the words drowned out by Clint’s shout that almost turned into a frustrated sob when Phil inexplicably went still again after just a few thrusts. Clint could see how much it was costing him this time, how tight his face looked as he struggled to stay still when his knot started to fill.

“ _Move_ ,” he pleaded, and this time Phil didn’t ask him if he was sure.

“Clint, Clint, oh God, tell me if it’s too much,” he panted, moving in slow, tiny increments. He was so very careful, and as much as he was obviously enjoying it, it also seemed to be costing him even more than staying still had.

It wasn’t what Clint wanted at all.

“Harder,” he told him. “Phil, come on, _fuck me_.”

And Phil finally, _finally_ , did.

The first thrust punched all the air out of Clint’s lungs, and he wailed at the second, but he didn’t say stop and so Phil kept going. He pounded into him, rough thrusts that drove his knot as far as it could go before withdrawing until it caught on Clint’s sphincter, and then doing it all over again. It made Clint yell and cling to him with both arms and legs, desperate for something to hold on to. It was nothing like the first time, when Phil had been holding himself so still that all Clint could focus on had been the knot growing impossibly big. Now he got to feel it rub against his prostate with each of Phil’s thrusts, and he found himself arching into it, _wanting_ it. God, he hadn’t known it would be like this. It hurt, but it felt so good too, and Clint never did ask Phil to stop, not even when the knot grew so large it could barely move anymore.

Phil’s protests were long gone, a litany of filth falling from his lips instead that would have made Clint blush had he had any shame left. 

“Take it, take it, oh God, Clint, look at you, you’re taking it, you’re amazing, tell me you like it, tell me,” he gasped as his hips jerked hard against Clint’s ass in an effort to drive his knot deeper still, as deep as Clint could take until he couldn’t anymore and it was too much, _too much_ –

“Fuck, oh _fuck_ , Phil, I–” Clint sobbed, and then he was coming, his orgasm almost painful in its intensity. 

He must have blacked out for a while afterwards, because when he next blinked his eyes open, Phil was panting against his neck, coming down from his own orgasm with his knot firmly lodged inside him. Clint’s ass throbbed around it in time with his heartbeat, and he had never felt so raw and open before – had never felt so good either.

Phil raised his head to look at him when he realised Clint was back with him, and he reached out with a hand that shook a little to wipe tears off Clint’s face tenderly.

“Okay?” he asked, and Clint could only nod.

He was.

 

The heat was over the next morning, which was good because Clint was so sore and fucked out that the mere idea of more sex was highly unappealing. Phil fluttered around him, unsure of what to do. Had Clint been an omega, Phil would undoubtedly have tried to pamper him up, but Clint wasn’t and clearly Phil didn’t know what the protocol was. 

All that uncertainty was starting to get on Clint’s nerves, especially considering what they had spent the last three days doing. In the end he caught Phil’s arm and pulled him on the bed with him before draping himself over his chest. 

Much better. 

He dozed, and Phil ran a hand through his hair. It was nice.

“So,” Phil said softly in the silence. “You know you don’t have to do it again next time if you don’t want to.”

Clint lifted his head from where it was smashed against Phil’s neck to shoot him an incredulous look. “Are you kidding me?”

Phil flushed a little. “I’m just saying, if you change your mind at any point, that’s fine.”

“Do _you_ want to do it again?” Clint asked, suddenly concerned that maybe this hadn’t been what Phil needed after all and he was trying to let him down gently.

“Yes,” Phil said quickly, and Clint released the breath he was holding. “I just want you to know –”

“I know,” Clint cut him off. “Now shut up, I’m sleeping.”

Phil snorted but he did shut up, and Clint smiled against his skin.

Who cared what people thought?

They were going to be just fine.

\---

They were better than fine for a long time. 

Work was good – and getting weirder –, life was good, and the sex was _great_. It took Clint a while to admit out loud that he loved Phil fucking him during a heat – to reconcile that with the image he had had of himself for years. Phil let him deal with it at his own pace, though he would tell Clint later that he had known for a while when he finally confessed to him. After that, they did their best not to be away when it was that time again – it sucked to have to wait another six months when they missed one, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. 

Some people looked at them funny when they realised they were together, and Phil’s next door neighbours – now Clint’s as well – suddenly decided they were beneath their notice. But strangers could also be surprisingly supportive – there was this woman at the grocery store who smiled at them every time they went there. It had freaked Clint out at first, and he had spent two weeks convinced she was a double-agent until he had made Phil run a background check on her. Phil had laughed but he had done it anyway, and nothing had come up – she was just nice.

They were an open secret at work, and no one said anything to them. If some disapproved, they were wise enough to keep it to themselves.

They were happy.

And then Loki happened.

He took Clint and remade him into the perfect beta. The only thing that mattered was following orders, his whole being centred on obedience and servility and Loki. Clint couldn’t fight it, couldn’t even _think_ to fight it – he had no control at all, and he didn’t care. 

It was all his fears rolled up into one, and he didn’t even know it until it was all over and Loki’s hold on him was gone.

He didn’t know how he made it through the battle, didn’t even know how he was still standing, though it did feel kind of good to exert that sheer amount of willpower not to collapse right there and then – God, he was so _tired_.

Fury was waiting for them on the deck of the carrier when they returned.

“Barton, with me,” he barked as soon as they had disembarked, and Clint followed. One foot after the other.

“Phil is fine,” Fury opened with as soon as the door of his office had closed behind them.

Clint stared at him. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

It was Fury’s turn to look at him blankly, and then his expression cleared and he shook his head ruefully. “He is in Medical, Loki stabbed him but the docs got him back. It’ll take a while, but he’ll be fine.”

Clint swayed, and he saw spots of white in front of his eyes. He thought he was going to fall, or maybe pass out, but Fury grabbed his arm and made him to sit down. Yes, sitting was good.

“Come to think of it, you’re due a visit to Medical too. Do _not_ move.”

Clint nodded and closed his eyes. His head hurt.

He woke up in the infirmary two days later, feeling almost as bad as he had going in. But Phil was on the bed next to his and Natasha was watching over them, and that made it all worthwhile.

They had made it through, and now they could start healing.

 

It didn’t happen overnight, of course. Clint’s wounds were just as deep as Phil’s, if less visible, and it sometimes felt like he would never move past the guilt. It got a little better once Phil woke up, because at least then Clint could focus on making _him_ better, and as soon as Phil was strong enough he endeavoured to do the same for Clint.

Three weeks after the Chitauri invasion had been stopped, an army of robots swarmed into Manhattan as a new villain tried to take advantage of the generalised chaos still prevalent in the city to further his goals.

The Avengers were not amused.

Clint was supposed to be on leave, the reasons many and varied – Phil, the left-over effects from the concussion, a precautionary measure until SHIELD could be sure Loki’s mindfuck hadn’t had any lasting effect. But there was no way he was letting the team – or rather _Natasha_ at that point – go without backup, and even Fury didn’t say no to Captain America, not after lying to him about Phil being dead.

That second mission cemented the Avengers together as a team, Thor showing up in the middle of it to help, and Clint had to get used to a whole new range of things.

He had seen his new teammates regularly when they had visited Phil, and interacting with them on a day-to-day basis was difficult. Not Nat, of course – thank God she was there – but being around the others was harder.

Things were fine when they were deployed, all of them mostly focused on the job at hand. Rogers was a bit heavy-handed with the orders, but Clint could deal with that as long as he didn’t try to tell him how to do his job or question his inputs. No, it was being around them during their downtime that Clint had some trouble with. 

It wasn’t all that surprising: out of the four of them, the two alphas embodied everything Clint thought was wrong with their gender – Stark the arrogance and overblown sense of self-importance, Rogers the overly protective and patriotic side –, Thor’s alienness in the gender spectrum was so foreign that the only thing it reminded Clint of was Loki – definitely _not_ a good thing –, and while he didn’t have anything against Banner specifically, the man still made Nat on edge and so Clint couldn’t help but being too.

It took him a while to accept that while they were all that, they were also so much more, and the good outweighted the bad. It probably took him longer than it should have, but then Clint was spending as much time in Medical with Phil as he could, and that didn’t leave a lot of time to socialise.

A little over two months after the Chitauri, the Avengers were coming back from a deployment in DC – giant rats, really? – when an urgent call from Medical came through for Clint. Something was wrong with Phil, and while they wouldn’t say what over the radio, they needed Clint to get there as quickly as possible.

The rest of the trip was a blur, Clint’s brain trying to make sense of the words. It had happened once before – Phil had developed an infection that had set his release back by a couple of weeks –, but it didn’t make any sense now. Phil was better, they were talking about sending him home in a couple of days if the next chest X-rays looked good. What could possibly have happened in the last twenty-four hours?

He was out of the Quinjet as soon as it landed, the team trailing after him worriedly. But Clint knew all the shortcuts, some of which Thor and Rogers wouldn’t fit through, and he made it well before the others.

He barged into Phil’s room, taking in the scene in a heartbeat.

Someone had put Phil in restraints and he was fighting them, twisting and straining and doing himself more harm in the process if the bright spot of red blossoming on his T-shirt was any indication. He stopped as soon as he saw Clint, slumping back against the bed with a pathetic sound, and Clint realised what was happening.

Phil was early.

“Why the fuck isn’t he on suppressants?” he barked at the nurse who had followed him in, crossing the room to get to Phil’s side and laying a gentle hand against his cheek. The way Phil turned his head into the touch made his chest ache.

“They’re contra-indicated in his state. We can sedate him for the duration but first he needs –”

“Yeah, I know,” Clint interrupted her absently, and then said softly to Phil: “Your timing sucks, you know?”

“Sorry,” Phil croaked, closing his eyes as Clint brushed sweaty hair back from his flushed forehead. “I was looking forward to this. Next month.”

“It’s okay, I’m going to take care of you. But first,” Clint pushed Phil’s T-shirt up to inspect the bandages, “someone needs to look at what you’ve done to yourself, okay?”

“Yeah.”

Clint nodded to the nurse, who left the room and came back with a doctor in tow a few seconds later – Myrn, a beta, good choice. Alphas could get territorial when they were in heat, and while usually Phil would have more than enough control not to react to another alpha being near Clint, he was both in pain and on painkillers – not a good combination.

Before Myrn had even made it to the bed, the whole team stormed into the room, looking ready to do battle – except Natasha, who shot an apologetic look at Clint. She could only delay them so long.

For a second, everybody froze, and then Phil went tense all over again. He actually snarled at them before he forcefully stopped himself, looking vaguely chagrined by his outburst, and Clint quirked a questioning eyebrow at him. He would have teased Phil about going alpha male on him under other circumstances – he highly doubted anyone on the team had any design on him –, but at the moment it was just a reminder that Phil was hurt. That he may not be strong enough to handle this.

“Sorry,” Phil said, making a visible effort to relax, and Clint grasped his hand in support.

“Well, I guess that answers that question,” Stark said before raising his hands in the air. “Don’t worry, Agent, he’s all yours.” 

“Wait, the two of you?” Rogers looked confused. “But –”

Stark slapped a hand over his mouth before he could say another word – and wisely so, considering Nat had taken a menacing step in his direction. Clint bit back a smile. It was nice of them, but unnecessary – he knew Rogers didn’t mean anything by it, the guy wasn’t one to judge. Still, better shut him up before he said something insensitive he would regret later – he was having a hard enough time catching up with the societal changes of the past seventy years. And Clint didn’t want Phil to think his childhood hero disapproved – though if it turned out Rogers really did, Clint would have to have words with him about it later.

“Now that you’ve all seen that Phil is fine, do you think we could have some privacy?” Clint said pointedly.

“Yes, of course,” Rogers said, bright red but seemingly recovered enough to herd his teammates towards the door.

“What is happening?” Clint heard Thor ask on his way out and Banner tell him he would explain later. He smiled – he had a good team.

Only Natasha lingered, waiting for Clint’s nod to take off – and Stark, who waggled his eyebrows at them and only stopped long enough to say seriously:

“I’ll handle the cameras.”

Clint nodded his thanks – correction, he had the _best_ team –, and Myrn, who was still hovering by the door, muttered: “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

When they were finally alone, Myrn peeled back the bandages, and Clint was relieved to see that Phil had only torn a couple of stitches, the most recent made after the doctors had taken the last of his thoracic drains out.

She made quick work of cleaning and restitching the incision, and Clint kept a hand on Phil throughout. He wasn’t sure how it worked – something about molecules and body chemistry –, but the skin contact lessened the urgency of the heat.

Finally it was done, and the doc snapped her gloves off, turning towards Clint.

“I know it’s less than ideal, but try not to put pressure on his chest and left side. It’d be better to keep him restrained – I don’t want him pulling more stitches out because he forgot using his left arm was a bad idea. Monitor his heart rate – if it gets above 100, slow down. Same thing if he experiences chest pains or his respiratory rate gets too elevated.”

Clint nodded, ignoring the way Phil was looking mildly put out at being talked about as if he wasn’t there. Well, tough luck. Clint was in charge this time.

“Anything else?” he asked, and Myrn shook her head, reaching into her pocket to hand him some lube.

“Call us when you’re done, and we’ll put him under.”

 _‘At least she didn’t wish me luck,’_ Clint thought as she left, meeting Phil’s eyes to find the same wry amusement there.

Bending down to press a soft kiss against Phil’s mouth, Clint sighed. If this had happened in a few weeks’ time like it should have, Phil would have been home and his body would have been able to handle it better. But injury and illness had a way of disrupting one’s cycle, and it couldn’t be helped. 

“I _am_ sorry,” Phil said again, and Clint rolled his eyes at him, stopping further apologies with another kiss.

“Stop it, it’s not your fault,” he said, and started undressing him. It was quick: Phil was still shirtless from the examination, and it was only a matter of pushing his sweats and underwear down his legs. Phil’s cock sprang free, hard and leaking and ready, and it looked like he stopped himself from arching towards more contact by sheer force of will.

“If I undo the restraints, are you going to hurt yourself?” Clint asked. He couldn’t take Phil’s pants off completely without undoing the ankle restraints, and while the few times he and Phil had experimented with bondage had been fun, their current predicament was something entirely different.

Phil hesitated before going with the truth. “Leave them on.”

Clint quickly got rid of his own clothes, feeling Phil’s heated gaze on every stretch of revealed skin. He almost wished he could pretend this was any other time and they were somewhere else, but the hospital setting made it difficult to hold on to the fantasy. So he gave up, grabbing the lube to stretch himself.

The angle was awkward, and it seemed to take longer than usual for his body to relax. Phil stayed silent and watched, his breathing shallow but not too fast, and when Clint glanced up his heart rate was still well within the green. So far so good.

When he was done, he clambered onto the bed, straddling Phil’s legs – which had the added benefit of keeping him mostly immobile while he spread lube on his cock. After some consideration Clint also put the guard rails up, thinking it could help with his balance without putting too much strain on Phil’s injuries.

“Ready?” he asked, and Phil took a deep breath and let it out slowly before nodding.

Clint grasped Phil’s cock and positioned it at his entrance, lowering himself slowly with a groan. Phil’s heart rate went up as he tried to reach for him, the restraints stopping him before he could make contact. 

“Slowly,” Clint reminded him and proceeded to demonstrate, keeping a slow but steady rhythm as he rocked down on Phil’s cock. But it didn’t seem to be enough, Phil getting more agitated and straining against the restraints. His heart rate was getting closer to the red as well, and Clint stopped.

“Sorry, sorry,” Phil said, and Clint ran what he hoped was a soothing hand along Phil’s arm.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I need–”

“Anything, tell me.”

“I need to touch you.”

Clint thought it over before undoing the restraint on Phil’s right wrist. He took Phil’s hand in his as soon as it was free, linking their fingers together securely so he could limit Phil’s movements and stop him from hurting himself if it became necessary.

“Okay?” he asked, and Phil nodded.

“Thanks.”

“Any time,” he said with a grin, pleased that Phil already seemed calmer and more in control.

He started moving again, his free hand going to the railing to keep himself upright. He knew it wouldn’t be long now, Phil’s heat too advanced for that, and it wasn’t. 

“Clint– _Clint_ –” Phil gasped, the only warning he could manage in his state, and Clint did his best to reassure him.

“I know, I know, it’s okay, I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere, you’re going to make sure of that,” he said, causing Phil’s hips to involuntarily thrust up.

“Christ, Clint, you can’t say stuff like that, not if you want me to stay calm,” he groaned. 

Clint laughed, the sound turning into a whimper as the knot started to swell. There was a new urgency in Phil’s half-aborted movements as he grew more and more desperate to come, and Clint shot a worried glance at the monitor – still good, but barely. And then it was blessedly over, Phil coming with a hoarse shout. 

Clint bit down hard on his lower lip to keep from crying out when Phil tied, breathing through it shallowly. He was used to the fullness by now and it barely hurt anymore, except maybe that first time after six months without. But he was only half-hard, and without the burn of arousal to make up for it now, it wasn’t entirely pleasant. He would take Phil being alive over the discomfort any day though. 

He kept an eye on the monitor, relieved to see that everything was settling back firmly into the green as Phil came down, slumped against the bed with no hint of the previous tension left in his body. It wasn’t long before Phil was reaching for his cock, but Clint shook his head. He didn’t need to. 

“Wouldn’t want to get come all over your brand new bandages,” he teased, and Phil rolled his eyes at him, ruining the effect with a yawn.

“You sure?”

“You can make it up to me later. Get some rest,” Clint said, pressing a soft kiss on the back of his hand.

“See you in a couple of days,” Phil mumbled through another yawn. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

Phil fell asleep almost immediately, barely stirring when his knot deflated enough for Clint to gingerly push himself off, wincing a little as it slipped free. Clint cleaned them both quickly before putting their clothes back on, and then he called the doctors.

They put Phil under, and Clint barely left his side for the next two days, unable to stop thinking about that time not so long ago when he hadn’t known if Phil would wake up at all, and half-afraid that the heat had somehow hurt his recovery.

But Phil did wake up, right on schedule, and the day after that the docs said he could go home.

\---

Clint helped Phil out of the cab and into their building, ignoring his half-hearted glare in the elevator. It was only early afternoon, but he could tell Phil was tiring already – he had that pinched look around his eyes and mouth Clint knew too well. The reconstruction work in the city was still underway, making traffic even more of a nightmare than usual, and it had taken them forever to get to their place.

“Couch or bed?” he asked Phil once he had gotten their door open.

“Couch,” Phil answered stubbornly, and Clint didn’t bother trying to change his mind. If he had spent nearly two months in bed, he would be looking forward to some variety too.

Phil sat down with a relieved groan. “I’m fine,” he said, pre-empting a question from Clint who held his hands up in surrender with a small smile.

Leaving Phil to rest, he puttered around the apartment, cracking a couple of windows open and stripping the bed before throwing the bedding and their dirty clothes into the washer. He hadn’t been home for more than a couple of hours at a time in two months, only stopping by to pick up fresh clothes. The apartment smelled a little musty, and it could probably do with a more in-depth cleaning, but first things first.

“I’m going to buy some food,” he told Phil, handing him his pills and a glass of water. “Do you need anything?”

“The remote?” Phil asked with a hopeful glance at the TV, and Clint gave it to him with a grin. 

He dropped a quick kiss on top of Phil’s head and left him to catch up on the crappy shows he set the TV to record automatically, grabbing his keys and wallet on his way out.

He was constructing a list of essentials in his head as he made his way down the stairs, not really paying attention to his surroundings – this was home, he was safe there –, and then he opened the front door–

–and was suddenly hit in the face by a wave of noise, dozens of people shouting at him while too many camera flashes turned his vision white.

Shit. 

Clint closed the door abruptly, his mind running at a hundred miles per hour. He couldn’t believe he had been so _stupid_. His face had been all over the news for weeks after Loki, of course someone would recognise him. One of their small-minded neighbours must have seen them come in and called the press, or maybe the cab driver. 

_Shit_.

He took the stairs two at a time, hoping no one would buzz them in – the last thing he wanted was for them to come banging on their front door.

Phil sat up when he opened the door, blinking blearily at him. On the TV, someone with a shrill voice was complaining about something.

“Did I fall asleep?” he asked, and then: “What’s wrong?”

“Someone called the press. There are dozens of them parked outside.”

“Shit.” Phil pushed himself to his feet and walked to the window to peer outside while Clint hit speed dial on his phone, pacing back and forth.

“Remember, you’re supposed to watch your blood pressure,” Clint reminded Phil absently while the phone rang.

“What?” Fury answered with his usual abruptness.

“There’s press outside our building – a lot of press,” Clint told him, the curtness of his tone revealing just how pissed he was. This was their apartment, damn it. It was _private_ , and Phil was supposed to be resting.

“I’ll send back-up,” Fury said after cursing colourfully, and Clint hung up.

“Fury is sending people,” he relayed to Phil. “Shit.”

Phil sat back on the couch and turned the TV off, extending a hand towards Clint. “Come here,” he said, and Clint went, sprawling next to him and clasping his hand tightly.

“I guess it was bound to come out,” Clint sighed. If they had found him here, then they would know who he was with. At least Phil’s cover should hold even against the most determined of investigators.

“We could deny it.”

Clint snorted. “Phil, I’ve been living here five years and your neighbours have just proved that they’re more than willing to sell us out for a profit. There is no way that would work.”

“It’s a two-bedroom apartment. We could say we’re roommates – after all, we both spend a lot of time out of town. With the housing market being what it is, it’d make sense to share.”

“I’m not lying,” Clint said stubbornly. “Unless– do _you_ want to?”

Phil looked pained by the question and shook his head sharply. “No. But you know what they’ll say about you.”

Clint shrugged. Phil was right of course. He would be taking the brunt of it when their relationship became public knowledge. As far as everyone knew, Phil was a nobody – he may get some shit from traditionalists taking offense at the waste of good alpha sperm, and from the newly formed beta rights groups who’d accuse him of taking advantage, but as an alpha he would mostly be above criticism. Clint wouldn’t be so lucky.

“I’ve been called worse. Besides, you know how little I care about what people think of me.”

“You’re amazing,” Phil said, and Clint laughed. 

“I’m really not.” He dropped a kiss on Phil’s lips before pulling back, still grinning. “I love you. Try not to worry, okay? Medical will know and yell at me at your next check-up.”

A knock on their door interrupted them, and Clint tensed – there was no way SHIELD had made it so quickly. Next to him, Phil was reaching under the coffee table, taking out a taser, and Clint shot him a disbelieving look. 

“Really? You’re going less lethal here?”

Phil shrugged, wincing as it pulled at his stitches, and Clint made his way to the door, looking through the peephole before shaking his head wryly and opening the door.

He should have known.

“ _You_ ’re Fury’s back-up?”

Tony smirked, pushing past him to stand in their living room. As usual with Stark, the room suddenly seemed two sizes smaller.

“You know it, baby.” 

“Mister Stark.”

“Aw, Agent, you wound me. After all my vigils by your bedside, the least you could do is call me by my first name,” Tony said with a wounded expression on his face before leering at the taser. “Is that for me? You really shouldn’t have.”

If anything Phil’s grip on his weapon tightened challengingly, and Clint rolled his eyes at them – they really weren’t fooling anyone.

“Am I meant to understand this is an Avengers outing?” Phil asked, but Tony shook his head.

“Nah, it’s just me and Cap. We figured it’d be bad press if Natasha murdered some hapless journalist on live television for going after her BFF. And we don’t need our great press corps’ stupidity making Bruce hulk out and smash a few of them – he might blame himself afterwards. As for Thor, well I guess you didn’t hear, but he and cameras really don’t mix. It’s a funny story actually, he was–”

A bolt of lightning streaked past the window, interrupting Tony who cocked his head sideways contemplatively. 

“You sure about it being just you and Steve?” Clint asked dubiously, and then: “Hey, Nat.”

Tony jumped, whirling around to see Natasha close a window behind her.

“I thought we agreed!” he sputtered, and she raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “How did you get here so fast anyway?”

“Banner drove,” she said.

“Right, so what’s the plan?” Clint stepped in.

“Well, Steve is trying to appeal to their inner goodness, but I guess we all know how that’s going to go. So you guys are moving to the Tower with the rest of us – much better security than this place.”

Clint sighed. Tony had been trying to convince him to move in with the rest of the team for weeks, taking his refusal almost personally before he had found out about him and Phil. In the past few days Tony had been surprisingly willing to let the subject lie, but Clint should have known he was merely regrouping – not that any of this was his fault, of course, but still. Clint had _liked_ their apartment.

He looked at Phil, who nodded back with resignation.

“Fine,” Clint sighed, and Tony beamed triumphantly at them. 

“Don’t bother packing, I’ve got people on their way to move everything to your floor.”

Well, that was fast.

“There’s a wash in the machine,” he said, and Tony looked weirdly fascinated by that. 

“How domestic.” Clint flipped him off. “Leave that too, they can handle it.”

“I’ll get the weapons and Phil, Banner is waiting for us out back,” Natasha added, and Clint smiled at her gratefully.

“Don’t forget his pills,” he said.

“No,” Phil interrupted firmly, pushing himself to his feet with a muffled groan that made Clint reach out reflexively to help.

“Phil, you don’t have to do this,” he said softly, stepping close to him anyway, and Phil fixed him with a resolute stare.

“You’re not going out there without me.”

The finality in his voice told Clint there would be no winning this argument, not unless he was willing to knock him out – he wasn’t –, so he nodded. It was Phil’s decision, and he trusted him to know his mind, just like Phil trusted him to know his.

“Let’s get this over with,” he muttered, grabbing Phil’s pills and following Tony out of the door.

Together the three of them got into the elevator, and Natasha watched them leave with an unreadable expression on her face.

Even from the lobby, the noise from the crowd seemed to have increased. It was almost overwhelmingly loud now, and Clint hoped that whoever had called the press lived on one of the lower floors.

“Right,” Tony said, suddenly all business. “You two are getting a crash course in dealing with the media. Lucky for you, I’m an expert. ‘No comment’ is your new best friend until we can make some sort of statement. Pepper says thanks, by the way. You guys just took the spot of most infamous couple in the Avengers right from under us – don’t look at me like that, Phil,” he added, “they’ll say a lot worse. Ready?”

Clint grabbed Phil’s hand, and Tony nodded approvingly, putting his sunglasses on. Clint wished he had thought of that. Too late now.

“Let’s roll.”

Tony pushed the door open, and they were suddenly assaulted by an explosion of sounds. Clint could see the car parked right on the curb with Happy standing by, but it seemed to be at an insurmountable distance, with a sea of people blocking their way. He almost faltered, reluctant to enter the fray without anyone watching their back, and as if they had read his thoughts, Steve and Thor appeared next to him.

“Go,” Steve shouted over the noise, and Clint took off after Stark, sticking close to him while trying to stay on Phil’s more vulnerable left side, Steve and Thor following close behind. 

The crowd parted for them reluctantly, shouting questions that the hypervigilant part of Clint’s brain registered peripherally while the rest of him was focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

And then they were piling up in the car, the silence as the doors closed behind them almost loud by comparison. Phil’s face was tight and he was holding himself stiffly. Clint had lost his hand in the scramble to get inside, and he groped around for it, feeling a little better once he had reclaimed it.

As the car drove away, putting distance between them and the journalists – though Clint had no doubt the most persistent ones would follow – they started to relax in their seats, and Tony broke out the alcohol, shrugging when everyone but Thor declined.

“Sorry, guys,” Steve said, looking guilty. “They wouldn’t listen.”

“I’m sure you did your best, Captain,” Phil told him diplomatically.

“Steve,” he corrected – not for the first time –, and Clint found himself biting back a smile at the hint of colour it brought to Phil’s face despite the circumstances.

“What was this madness?” Thor asked, and Clint shared a look with the others. In some ways, Asgardians were lucky.

“Just some narrow-minded people disagreeing with Clint’s choice for a partner,” Stark finally said, clearly deciding that the long-winded version could wait.

“But the son of Coul is a mighty warrior,” Thor pointed out with a small frown.

“It’s not about that, buddy,” Steve said, “it’s about what they both are. Some people don’t think they’re… compatible.”

Thor nodded thoughtfully. “Ah, I think I understand your meaning. The Lady Sif too faced criticisms when she applied herself to study the art of combat. Some did not find it proper for one of the fair sex. Would that be an apt comparison?”

“Kinda?” Steve said, looking at Clint for confirmation, and Clint shrugged back at him. It would do for now.

There was a crowd waiting for them at Stark Tower as well, but the underground parking garage was blessedly quiet – and heavily guarded. They quickly made their way to the private elevator, Tony hitting two floor numbers – one Clint recognised as the team’s common floor, where he had been a few times when Phil had insisted he couldn’t just hang around Medical all day. The other, a few floors above it, he didn’t know.

Thor and Steve exited first and were replaced by Pepper, who smiled warmly at Phil. Clint didn’t know her very well – they had been introduced briefly when she had visited Phil –, but he knew Phil considered her a friend, and he had an idea why. Alpha women got a raw deal, same as omega men. They were both vastly outnumbered by their counterparts, and a lot of people tended to ignore the half of their gender that didn’t fit with their world view – usually the alpha part for women, and the men part for omegas. Unless, of course, they were using it to make a disparaging point about their behaviour. It sucked, but Pepper hadn’t let it slow her down, and Clint wasn’t surprised Phil liked her.

Her and Stark getting together had had the effect of a bomb in the media – two alphas, out in the open, _flaunting_ their relationship? People may turn a blind eye to it in the armed forces, but they couldn’t ignore it this time – it was Stark, and the guy was everywhere. At least Pepper was a woman, but still, an _alpha_ , who could challenge him? Not at all appropriate. Alphas _always_ married down – for some people’s definition of down, anyway. There would be a resurgence of vitriol every now and then, but things had calmed down eventually when it had lost some of its novelty. 

Hopefully it would be the same for him and Phil.

“You could have told me, you know,” Pepper told Phil in a mildly chiding tone. “After all, I’m hardly in a position to judge.” She glanced in Tony’s direction, a fond if slightly exasperated expression on her face.

“You love me,” Tony said smugly.

“Sometimes I wonder why.”

“I can think of a few things,” he leered, and the ping of the elevator thankfully stopped him from elaborating, saving Clint from being scarred for life.

Tony bounced out of the elevator, clearly excited about something.

“Ta-da!” He spread his arms wide, looking back at them expectantly.

“Maybe you should give them a tour before you ask them what they think?” Pepper pointed out, and Tony pouted before launching into his presentation.

“Right, so, originally you each had your own floor, since you didn’t see fit to inform me you would only be needing one –” he shot them a reproachful look before he went on, walking away to show off this or that, Clint and the others trailing after him.

“He’s spent the last two days remodelling,” Pepper whispered to them conspiringly, and Clint nodded absently. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that the layout was familiar. 

“Does this remind you of anything?” he asked Phil.

“Our apartment – the proportions, at least,” he answered with a slight frown. “Mr Stark, did you hack into our SHIELD personnel files again?”

“ _Tony_ ,” he corrected stubbornly before trying to laugh it off: “Why would I do that?”

“To find out where we lived and get the building’s blue prints?” Clint hazarded a guess, and Tony suddenly became engrossed by the view from the window. “Tony?”

“Well, since you didn’t want to move in, I figured maybe something familiar would change your mind,” he shrugged awkwardly, and Pepper put a soft hand on his arm. “Anyway, if you don’t like it, that’s fine, I can change it.”

“Thank you, Tony. It’s… great,” Phil said, and just like that Tony was back to his blustering self, all trace of discomfort gone.

“I know, I’m a genius – I told you they would like it,” he boasted to Pepper, who rolled her eyes at him. “Anyway, your stuff should be here in a couple of hours, just tell the guys where you want it, and JARVIS is around if you need anything.” 

“Why don’t we let Phil get some rest,” Pepper said, manoeuvring Tony back towards the elevator, and Clint shot her a relieved smile.

“Right, right.” Tony let himself be dragged away, only turning back to call out: “Tonight, 8 o’clock, welcome dinner with the team. See you then!”

They disappeared into the elevator, and Phil sank down gratefully on the couch, looking a little poleaxed. Clint knew the feeling, and he poked around some more around their floor before joining him.

“Are you okay with all this?” he asked, and Phil gave him a slight smile.

“Could be worse,” he said. “This couch is very comfortable.”

“The bed is even better,” Clint smirked before growing serious again. “So. Are you?”

“I don’t really care _where_ I live, as long as you’re there too.”

Clint wrinkled his nose a little at the sentiment – one he shared, obviously, but saying it out loud made it sound so cheesy. 

“You asked,” Phil pointed out, laughter dancing in his eyes, and Clint kissed him just to shut him up.

Too bad Medical hadn’t cleared Phil for anything strenuous outside heat-related emergencies. That bed really was something.

\---

Their furniture fitted startlingly well with what was already there, and Clint tried not to think about how Tony had managed it – he had come up with three possibilities so far, and none of them was all that reassuring.

They settled in easily, sharing their time between their floor and the common areas. Steve delivered a speech on behalf of the Avengers saying they fully supported Clint’s relationship, and the media storm raged on. Clint didn’t pay much attention to it – he just wasn’t interested. It was easy: he spent most his time at the Tower, either with Phil or training, and no journalist ventured there – not since the last one had been trapped in a staircase by JARVIS. The rest of the time he was on ops, and things were usually life-threatening enough that reporters stayed the hell away.

It was impossible to avoid it entirely, the headlines screaming at him every time he picked up a newspaper or turned on the TV. It was harder for Phil, who was still on medical leave and had little to distract himself with. Clint could tell it was wearing on him, and no matter how many times he told him to ignore it, he knew Phil couldn’t just let it go. Clint may not care about what people said about him, but Phil did – which was only fair, he supposed. If people had been badmouthing Phil, Clint would have taken offense too.

He could only hope things would quiet down soon.

Surprisingly, not all the resulting attention was negative. Random people – both influential and not – publically came out in support of ‘alternative’ relationships, and more couples like them went public. It didn’t do much, but it did help take some of the heat off them, and Clint was grateful. 

Slowly life went back to normal. He and Phil would probably never stop being a big deal – for their generation at least – but maybe this was the beginning of change. It seemed strange to Clint – whose ultimate goal in life had been not to get noticed for the longest time – that he and Phil may just have inadvertently helped society move forward, but if it was the case, he would take it. For now he had Phil, and his team, and SHIELD. It was more than enough.

 

Years down the line, people would ask him how he felt about being a role model for a generation of betas, and he would shrug and say he hadn’t done anything. That was usually when Phil would start talking over him, lauding him with praises that still made him blush after all that time, and they would start bickering about who had done what until the others rolled their eyes at them and Steve pointedly cleared his throat to get them back on track.

People would also ask if it had been worth it, and Clint would look at Phil then, at his wrinkles and his grey hair and his proud smile, and he would smile back.

That was answer enough.


End file.
